What is Six Sigma?
So
many of the visitors to this site have come here to
learn about Six Sigma for the first time. Whether it is
a new initiative at your company or organization, or
whether you just want to keep on top of what you may be
hearing about in the halls at your workplace - Six Sigma
is here to stay ... and hopefully, this will be a good
introduction.
Six Sigma was pioneered
by Bill Smith at Motorola in 1986. Originally, it was
defined as a metric for measuring defects and improving
quality; and a methodology to reduce defect levels below
3.4 Defects Per (one) Million Opportunities (DPMO). Huh? What does that mean??
Six Sigma is a registered
service mark and trademark of Motorola, Inc. Motorola
has reported over US$17 billion savings from Six Sigma
to date. GE became one of the early adopters of Six
Sigma and reported benefits of over US$300 million
during its first year of application. It played a vital
role in popularizing Six Sigma. Other major
organizations who claim to have benefited from Six Sigma
implementation are Ford, Caterpillar, Microsoft,
Raytheon, Quest Diagnostics, Seagate Technology,
Siemens, Merrill Lynch, Lear, 3M and many more.
Six Sigma has two
key methodologies– DMAIC and DMADV.
DMAIC is used to
improve an existing business process. DMADV is
used to create new product designs or process designs in
such a way that it results in a more predictable, mature
and defect free performance. Sometimes a DMAIC project may turn into a DFSS (
Design for Six Sigma) project because the process
in question requires complete re-design to bring about
the desired degree of improvement.
DMAIC Basic
methodology consists of the following five phases:
Define formally define the process improvement goals that
are consistent with customer demands and enterprise
strategy.
Measure to
define baseline measurements on current process for
future comparison. Map and measure process in
question and collect required process data.
Analyze to
verify relationship and causality of factors. What
is the relationship? Are there other factors that
have not been considered?
Improve optimize the process based upon the analysis using
techniques like Design of Experiments.
Control setup
pilot runs to establish process capability,
transition to production and thereafter continuously
measure the process and institute control mechanisms
to ensure that variances are corrected before they
result in defects.
DMADV Basic
methodology consists of the following five phases:
Define formally define the goals of the design activity
that are consistent with customer demands and
enterprise strategy.
Measure identify CTQs, product capabilities, production
process capability, risk assessment, etc.
Analyze develop and design alternatives, create high-level
design and evaluate design capability to select the
best design.
Design develop
detail design, optimize design, and plan for design
verification. This phase may require simulations.
Verify verify
design, setup pilot runs, implement production
process and handover to process owners. This phase
may also require simulations.
Citation: Wikipedia.org
Explore the Top 10 books about Six Sigma here.
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